Tag Archives: communism

As previously noted, I saw this fascinating historical fact in a book I’m reading about the Cold War. The book was published in 2012, so it predates Antifa by many years. The author was describing the spread of the secret police (the NKVD / KGB) into Eastern European countries and how they relentlessly went after fascists, or more specifically how they called anyone they didn’t like a fascist as a pretext to imprison or kill them.

But in every country occupied by the Red Army, the definition of “fascist” eventually grew broader, expanding to include not only Nazi collaborators but anybody whom the Soviet occupiers and their local allies disliked. In time, the word “fascist,” in true Orwellian fashion, was eventually used to describe antifascists who also happened to be anticommunists. And every time the definition was expanded, arrests followed.

Some of these “fascists” had been identified in advance . . .

But the book had so much more about Communism in Eastern Europe that you don’t often hear about. The parallels to current Leftists is chilling but not surprising. Political correctness — that is, making people say things they know aren’t true – isn’t new.

The loss of freedom, tyranny, abuse, hunger would all have been easier to bear if not for the compulsion to call them freedom, justice, the good of the people … Lies, by their very nature partial and ephemeral, are revealed as lies when confronted with language’s striving for truth. But here all the means of disclosure had been permanently confiscated by the police. —Aleksander Wat, My Century

The “progressives” in the U.S. are mostly useful idiots who will be eliminated first. They have no idea how Communist states will restrict the freedom and creativity that these people take for granted.

In order to buy paints and brushes, artists had to have a tax number issued by the association and a membership card confirming the tax number. Anyone who wanted to paint, in other words, had to conform at least enough to remain a member of the association. Choosing not to join could mean choosing not to work as an artist at all.

The current Commies have been successful at destroying the Boy Scouts and Girls Scouts and other social organizations, just as their predecessors were.

At several points in 1947, Polish authorities considered shutting the Scouting movement down altogether. They worried, however, that a ban would send thousands of young people into the arms of the underground, or into the woods with the partisans. So they waited. And eventually, they adopted the tactic which, as noted, would become a standard tool in the Eastern European communist arsenal: they resolved to destroy the movement from within.

From the “sound familiar?” category, the campus snowflakes who shout down opposing views are nothing new.

Although his party allegedly controlled a third of the seats, whenever he spoke—or when any of his deputies spoke—the whole room would erupt in boos and catcalls, making it impossible to hear a word.

And one more “sound familiar?” bit:

Although they didn’t necessarily say so in public, most communist leaders shared Lenin’s loathing for small business.

The good news is that no matter what they Commies tried – and they tried everything from propaganda to murder – they could never accomplish their goal of making everyone support the regimes.

Like the CIA, the KGB, Khrushchev, and Dulles, Arendt had come to believe that totalitarian regimes, once they worked their way into the soul of a nation, were very nearly invincible. They were all wrong. Human beings do not acquire “totalitarian personalities” with such ease. Even when they seem bewitched by the cult of the leader or of the party, appearances can be deceiving. And even when it seems as if they are in full agreement with the most absurd propaganda—even if they are marching in parades, chanting slogans, singing that the party is always right—the spell can suddenly, unexpectedly, dramatically be broken.

The bad news is that unlike parts of the Eastern European churches that gave in to Communism, the “Christian” Leftist in the west volunteered for the mission to oppose the real Gospel and to spread Communism.

We are used to seeing Antifa — aka AntiF(irst)A(mendment) — reflexively label anyone they disagree with as fascists. If the topic wasn’t so serious and if Antifa wasn’t so violent you could just laugh them off. Yeah, we conservatives are such fascists that we want citizens to be armed, we want limited government, less regulations, etc. Seriously, we were the original anti-fascists. If we used a fraction of the tactics that Antifa does it would be in the news 24×7.

I just saw this fascinating historical fact in a book I’m reading about the Cold War. The book was published in 2012, so it predates Antifa by many years. The author was describing the spread of the secret police (the NKVD / KGB) into Eastern European countries and how they relentlessly went after fascists, or more specifically how they called anyone they didn’t like a fascist as a pretext to imprison or kill them.

But in every country occupied by the Red Army, the definition of “fascist” eventually grew broader, expanding to include not only Nazi collaborators but anybody whom the Soviet occupiers and their local allies disliked. In time, the word “fascist,” in true Orwellian fashion, was eventually used to describe antifascists who also happened to be anticommunists. And every time the definition was expanded, arrests followed.

So there is more evidence that Antifa and their apologists on the Left are just running the Communist playbook. They disingenuously call their opponents fascists to deflect attention from their Communism. And make no mistake: If they had the power of the KGB they’d start arresting and punishing conservatives today.

Yes, my friend believed it, and so do I, because it is true. I am very selective about the media I consume and I long ago dismissed sources that over-sensationalize things or have many mistakes (or any uncorrected mistakes).

The useful idiots on the Left only consume the Leftist mainstream media, go to Leftist educational institutions, watch Leftist entertainment, etc. They are embarrassingly poorly informed. Meanwhile, all the conservatives I know get plenty of news from the Left and the Right. That doesn’t make us correct — though we usually are! — but we are much, much more thoroughly informed. As in this example, Leftists are in such denial about what Islam does around the world.

I don’t say “useful idiots” as a random pejorative, it was a phrase used by Communists describing those who would unwittingly help destroy the U.S. from inside and then get killed anyway. This is a fascinating interview that shows just how effective they have been.

Leftists think these things couldn’t be happening because their media/education/entertainment cocoon is hiding them from it — sort of like the ISIS intelligence information that got edited to suit the Obama narrative. And sort of like the Planned Parenthood videos that people aren’t hearing about — or if they do hear about them, they believe the convenient lie that they were “edited” (as if every video isn’t edited). Because you can totally trust people who kill unwanted children for a living! Nothing to see here, folks . . . just blame Bush, racism, etc. and never mind the child-killing, and violent ideologies, etc.

Why did my Internet get so fast for the same price? I’m really not sure. Well, Google Fiber is coming to town. And in a completely unrelated event [cough, cough], Time Warner Cable decided to dramatically increase access speeds with zero price increases.

You do NOT get this with Socialism or Communism. And Crapitalism is only marginally better than those. Regional monopolies sound better than country-wide monopolies, but for the end user they are still monopolies. You need real free-market competition to optimize things for everyone.

Two good iPhone apps recommended by my 83 yr. old father — Appygraph (send cards via text, with your pictures pasted in) and Heart Rate (you put your finger on the camera lens and it takes your pulse). Apparently he’s the go-to guy for high tech. And my 78 yr. old mom had him text a picture of something to her in a store. Glad to see they are up on the latest things!

The Atlanta Public School cheating scandal was immense in its breadth and duration, not to mention its recklessness. This shouldn’t be a surprise, though. Unionized bureaucrats and teachers rarely have the interests of the children at heart. It is one more reason the “No Child Left Behind” and all other Federal initiatives are doomed to cause more problems than they solve. Education funding and incentives should be as local as possible. Federal initiatives are a waste that just lead to more corruption like this.

Fulton County prosecutors announced that a grand jury had indicted the Atlanta Public Schools’ ex-superintendent and nearly three dozen other former administrators, teachers, principals and other educators of charges arising from a standardized test cheating scandal that rocked the system.

Former Superintendent Beverly Hall faces charges including conspiracy, making false statements and theft because prosecutors said some of the bonuses she received were tied to falsified scores. Hall retired just days before the findings of a state probe were released in mid-2011. A nationally known educator who was named Superintendent of the Year in 2009, Hall has long denied knowing about the cheating or ordering it.

During a news conference Friday, Howard highlighted the case of Juwanna and another student, saying they demonstrated “the plight of many children” in the Atlanta school system.

Their stories were among many that investigators heard in hundreds of interviews with school administrators, staff, parents and students during a 21-month-long investigation.

The Karl Marx depicted in Jonathan Sperber’s absorbing, meticulously researched biography will be unnervingly familiar to anyone who has had even the most fleeting acquaintance with radical politics. Here is a man never more passionate than when attacking his own side, saddled with perennial money problems and still reliant on his parents for cash, constantly plotting new, world-changing ventures yet having trouble with both deadlines and personal hygiene, living in rooms that some might call bohemian, others plain “slummy,” and who can be maddeningly inconsistent when not lapsing into elaborate flights of theory and unintelligible abstraction.

Still, it comes as a shock to realize that the ultimate leftist, the father of Communism itself, fits a recognizable pattern.

Why are capitalist countries wealthy and socialist countries poor? Because the free market allocates resources more wisely than bureaucrats. This is how healthcare resources are allocated under Britain’s regime of socialized medicine:

Britain’s National Health Service, the NHS, recently spent £4,800 — about $7,200 — on enormous breast implants for an aspiring model while nearly 1,200 patients starved to death in hospitals over the past four years. Critics say the deaths were caused by neglect due to understaffing.

The NHS provided Josie Cunningham with 36DD implants in January after she told her doctor that being flat-chested was causing emotional distress.

It gets worse:

In addition to the breast implants, the NHS has also spent £25,000 — about $37,000 — on a sex-change operation for a 19-year-old male diagnosed with “gender identity disorder.”

University Compares Pro-Life Students to White Supremacists — But of course! Abortions kill blacks at a rate 3 times that of whites, and the taxpayer-funded abortion portion of the Democrats’ platform will increase that, so of course the pro-choicers are like white supremacists or worse. Oh, wait, what’s that? They said the pro-lifers were like the supremacists?!?! Wow.

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Abortion kills unwanted innocent but human beings. It is a scientific fact and basic common sense that a new human being is created at fertilization. So if someone calls you anti-abortion, don’t get defensive. Embrace it! Would you apologize for being anti-slavery?

America is capitalistic and greedy yet have of the population is subsidized.

Half of the population is subsidized yet they think they are victims.

They think they are victims yet their representatives run the government.

Their representatives run the government yet the poor keep getting poorer.

The poor keep getting poorer yet they have things people in other countries can only dream about.

They have all this stuff people in other countries can only dream about and yet they want America to be like those other countries.

I especially liked this one: “Their representatives run the government yet the poor keep getting poorer.” Just look at inner cities and their schools. Democrats have had virtual monopolies on their politics and education for over 50 years and what do they have to show for it? Detroit, anyone?

It is always interesting to get the perspectives of those who lived under full-fledged Communism. If only we had history classes in public schools that taught the truth about what Communism does to people.

Oleg Atbashian is a writer and graphic artist from the former USSR. Born and raised in Ukraine, he used to be a teacher, a translator, a worker, a freelance journalist, and at one time a propaganda artist, creating visual agitprop for the local Party committee in a Siberian town. In 1994, he emigrated to the USA hoping to live in a country that was ruled by reason and common sense. Ironically, he now lives in New York City. He is the creator of ThePeoplesCube.com, a satirical website where he writes under the name of Red Square.